Star Trek: Voyager (TV Series) Warhead (1999) User Reviews

A Picardo Showcase

[eonbluekarma · 7/10 · 7 September 2009]

In this episode, Picardo plays the role of a manic A.I. with a confused identity. Not only does Picardo steal this episode from Wang (Ensign Kim), he demonstrates why the writers and producers of Voyager consistently gave him episode that would showcase his acting skills.

Picardo doesn't receive enough credit for his acting on Voyager. Time after time, episodes such as "The Darkling", "Warhead", "Latent Image" and "Real Life" demonstrate Picardo's depth, not only in dramatic acting, but also an ability to connect emotionally with the audience. He absolutely is more than a projection of light.

"Warhead" is a good episode for Picardo. Although, as I mentioned above, there are other episodes in which Picardo is great and exceeds his accomplishments in Warhead. If you don't believe me watch "The Darkling".

7 out of 10.

Sheer Stupidity

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 9 September 2018]

So many of these cliffhanger episodes involve the most idiotic decision making imaginable. Harry is the temporary commandeer while everyone sleeps. He gets a distress call and wakes Chakotay up. When an away team goes to a planet they find a metal device that apparently has biological component. The Doctor is able to communicate with it. He wants it on board. Harry argues with him. When given the opportunity to make a command decision, Kim decides to listen to the doctor. There is no evidence of the thing being benign, but they bring it on board and once again it almost destroys them. They never learn. The writers never learn. While it is entertaining enough, the fact that Voyager is still flying is beyond belief.

The Doctor gets an explosive new personality.

[Tweekums · 8/10 · 22 March 2010]

When Harry Kim volunteers for night duty he thinks he is just getting some command experience which will be good for his career; he doesn't think it will lead to making a decision that could lead to the destruction of Voyager. While in command Harry takes Voyager off its course when he receives a distress signal, after consulting with Commander Chakotay he leads an away team to the planet's surface, they don't find anybody in need of rescue but the do find a mysterious device which the Doctor realises is a sentient individual. As it is alive they bean it back to the ship hoping to repair it. Unfortunately it turns out the device is a living bomb which crashed en route to its target. When they learn what it is they attempt to separate the intelligence from the bomb things go wrong and the bomb takes over the Doctor's hologram and demands that it is taken to its target. The crew must find a way to either defuse it or persuade it not to attack its target.

This episode gives Robert Picardo to show his acting skills playing both the Doctor and the living bomb. It also gave Garrett Wang a chance to do more with his character, Harry Kim, than play second fiddle to Tom Paris. The story itself was fairly gripping with an interesting plot where ultimately negotiation proved more successful than subterfuge.

That's what you get for putting Harry Kim in charge!

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 28 February 2015]

Ensign Kim has been given the chance to command Voyager during the 'night' shift (there's no night or day in space!). However, this shirt is anything but dull in this episode. It all begins with the ship receiving a distress call. When Harry and the Doctor land on a craptastic planet, they find that the call is NOT coming from a living being but a machine that THINKS it's alive! Naturally the Doctor is excited, as he thinks he'll have some new mechanical friend. However, when they bring it aboard they learn the truth--it's a type of smart WEAPON. Way to go, Harry!

This is a decent episode. It also gives Robert Picardo a chance to act a bit outside his normal range as he's soon taken over by the weapon and it makes him act a tad grumpy, to put it mildly. Original and worth seeing.

Corrupt values

[loyalcitizenship · 6/10 · 10 March 2020]

This episode blessedly deals a deathblow to the idiotic declaring of AI-endowed machines to be lifeforms.

Ridiculous discussions defending a smart-bomb's right to exist. A bad joke.

Even when the mechanically simulated "being" is discovered to be nothing other than a bomb, the crew continues to implore it to abandon its programmed function to live a "meaningful life" in a holodeck.

So absurd, it is pitiful.

The same level of intelligence in a well-produced video game can be placed in a robot that looks human --- this does not make him any more human and sentient than the computer game --- except to ignorant people who are fooled by their emotions.

Sentience is NOT a well-written artificial computer intelligence program, since such a program contains NO identity or feeling being. It is no more real and feeling than an actor playing a pre-written role, who leaves the studio to resume his actual self, unmoved in any permanent way by his performance.

The AI programmed robot may ACT OUT a more varied set of reactions and computed thoughts than the actor, but it is nonetheless ONLY computing its reactions electronically within a limited programmed methodology written by human beings, and utterly mechanically regimented.

These episodes, though entertaining, are frighteningly naive and misleading. And they breed erroneous ideas and misplaced values.

Not a bad episode, but I struggled with a substantial amount of it

[snoozejonc · 6/10 · 30 October 2023]

Voyager's night-shift receives a distress signal..

It has the feel of an original series episode, with a simple Cold War, sci-fi premise, but with 90s era technobabble.

The plot has a number of contrivances that I find implausible to the point of distraction. Certain characters get Voyager into a predicament with what feels to me like idiotic decision making that no amount of debate about sentience can justify. It might have helped my capacity to suspend the disbelief if the title of the episode was something other than "Warhead".

What follows is a body possession story where the central character is unlikeable and blinkered for the majority of the episode, until another plot contrivance suddenly changes their perspective to bring about what feels like an obligatory spectacular ending.

Robert Picardo gives a strong committed performance, but the writers make him so continually aggressive it is a hard watch for me.

Garrett Wang is required to be assertive and involved in some heated discussions, and I think he feels like the emotion is being unnaturally forced out at times. That being said it includes some reasonably good development for his character.

Some of the themes about sentient beings struggling to break free of their programming to think ethically feels an allegory of humanity at its most destructive. I like this aspect of the story a lot but little else.

It's a 5.5/10 for me but I round upwards.

Great episode, but...

[ortech66 · 9/10 · 31 May 2021]

Why was Kim in command? There's at least one more ensign who's been on Voyager just as long and is wearing a red command uniform.

So I think I am

[tomsly-40015 · 6/10 · 12 January 2024]

Voyager follows a distress call to an abandoned planet but only finds a rocket-like device there, which is able to communicate with the doctor and appears to be intelligent and sentient. The doctor sees it as his duty to bring this new life form on board Voyager and to help it. When it crashed onto the planet, this being apparently lost some of its memories and is not directly aware of being a machine.

Of course, this machine is not beamed into a specially secured cargo bay but directly into engineering, next to the warp core. Although secured with a force field, you should not beam an alien creature that looks very suspiciously like a rocket directly next to the warp core.

In any case, the crew realizes that this is an intelligent weapon of mass destruction. However, the doc is able to convince Kim and Torres not to simply beam the rocket into space. Instead, they try to transfer this machine's "brain" into a holomatrix, but this triggers a defense mechanism. Instead, the machine transfers its consciousness to the doctor, through whom it now speaks and acts. I found this artistic decision rather unfortunate. The machine now uses the doc to communicate with the crew and move around. I would have found it better if the machine's consciousness had been transferred into its own holomatrix. Kim has tried several times to convince this machine that with the right "body" it could be more than just a weapon. And it would have helped if this machine had had its own body, its own appearance and thus its own identity.

After that it's all about the weapon wanting to resume its original mission, namely the destruction of a military complex of an enemy of their people. However, Kim finds out in the machine's logs that the war is already over and that the crash on the planet was triggered by its own people, as the missile was mistakenly launched along with several others. We then see a back and forth in the best "Crimson Tide" style until this machine finally gives in and realizes that it has to stop the other rockets also.

When this episode was written, AI wasn't as hyped and part of everyday life as it is today. Unfortunately, Star Trek had several episodes about intelligent and autonomous machines that were then described as sentient life forms. However, a machine that has AI is not the same as a new form of life. Especially since who would build a weapon of mass destruction that is sentient and can not only make tactical decisions autonomously according to its programming, but also perceives itself as a living being, wants to develop and be more than what its programming dictates? That might make sense for a combat robot, but no one would implant a life-form-like consciousness into a rocket. Just imagine: At some point a sentient rocket will be sitting in the pub with the sentient vacuum cleaner and the sentient refrigerator, drinking beer and talking shop about Parrises Squares.

Review Section

[cjohnson-46656 · 6/10 · 24 October 2023]

If there ever was an argument for an internet comment/review section I believe the 14 reviews I read would be it. All reviews were intelligent, insightful and interesting to read.

I thoroughly enjoy the doctor's acting. The only rationalization I can muster in my mind about this episode is the riders must have a heavy burden cranking out 25 episodes of season. I think that's mostly unheard of in 2023. I think loki has eight episodes and lower decks has 10.

I want to know what the script review process was. I did notice that Chakotay, Torres and some other crew member look and skeptical of Janeway's decision to keep the bomb on board. Maybe that was there way of secretly communicating how ridiculous the crew and themselves personally thought this was . Like another reviewer said, turn your brain off to enjoy this episode. I came to the review section to see if anyone was going to mention about the traders ship getting blown up. He said he had engineer onboard so it must've had a big crew. On the shot of voyager and the traders ship, it looks to be a decent size. A massive chain of command failure.

However I do enjoy shows about space ships and borg so I will give it a 6.

Perhaps, Voyager's stupidest episode.

[cannotlogon103 · 3/10 · 22 September 2010]

"Warhead" may be the single most idiotic episode of Voyager. First of all, it absolutely defies all logic that the crew was unable to ascertain that the devise at the heart of the episode was a weapon of mass destruction until well after they had beamed it on board the ship.

Second, why they succumb to the Doctor's absurd request that they try to "save" this so-called "sentient being" (the warhead had built in to it an artificial intelligence that allowed it to communicate with the Doctor...hardly sentience, but, instead, simply a very low level self-awareness), is beyond reason.

Instead of immediately beaming the warhead off the ship and putting it a few million miles behind them, they choose to try to further communicate with it, in order to find out where it is from and where it was going. IT'S A BOMB! Who cares?!?!?! Granted, Picardo gives a nice performance, but the premise of the episode is so utterly ridiculous, it doesn't save the episode from its own lack of internal logic.

This is why 1 star reviews were invented

[truittsonny · 1/10 · 12 April 2023]

Voyager is a TV show capable of such profound, mind numbing stupidity that it is almost quaint, and I love it. The cast deserved Emmys for reciting this episode's script with straight faces. They bring a bomb on board their ship and try to communicate with it. The doctor tries to protect it's feelings. I'm pretty Starfleet Academy is designed to weed out recruits who would behave like this, and the captain is the worst. Janeway allows the doctor to persuade her to keep the bomb on the ship. Were I on board Voyager I would have no choice other than to mutiny, assume command, and confine any officer who sided with the weapon of mass destruction to the brig. Seriously, you don't stay captain when you act like this. Interestingly, Kate Mulgrew gives the least convincing performance. She looks like she wished she would have called in sick to the set that day so she didn't have to say those lines. This is as bad as Voyager ever got. But it's still Voyager and I still love it.

Star Trek writers have seen Dark Star shock!

[gar_hodge · 5/10 · 27 June 2017]

My review would give them 3 out of 10 for originality, anyone who has seen the 1974 indie film Dark Star would recognise the part of the story line that John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon wrote all those years ago. Then it was written as a black comedy, this story tried to make it a serious subject, it doesn't work.

This episode reminded me why I skipped the series 20 years ago...

[Gernot S. · 4/10 · 14 April 2020]

...I can excuse boring characters, which Voyager has quite a few, but it's a complete showstopper when the "heroes" act unbelievably stupid, over and over again. Which they do in this one, even more than in most other episodes. This ship should have been destroyed at least a dozen times, by now, just because of their mind-blowing dumb "ah, lets do it, what could happen?" mindset.

Yeah this was a bit ridiclulous

[beanslegit · 5/10 · 18 February 2021]

Turn your brain off or you won't enjoy this one. Aside from all of Voyagers random time wasting diplomatic encursions that don't get them any closer to home, there's the inability to resist random space garbage. They always must beam it aboard, even if it clearly looks like an evil doomsday weapon, perhaps especially so. I would say they primarily avoid most of the safe looking objects in space because then they might get home faster.

Anyways... As usual the doctor steals the show protraying the AI of an evil space missile that has warp capabilities somehow (its about 1m long...) Also as usual Harry Kim presents all the emotion of a dead kipper.

Non essential, but not thoroughly unenjoyable.

How is Janeway a Captain?

[striveonsolutions · 3/10 · 3 June 2021]

After watching Picard and Sisco in the captain's chairs, voyager is like watching a parallel universe.

Janeway's decision making is so inconsistent, it seems like she ponders to how the writers want the story to go. And keep in mind the writers of Voyager appear to write stories with the preface of "wouldn't it be cool if..." like a group of inexperienced adolescent writers making a home movie.

I often find myself asking "where is this story going? Whats this about?", compared to TNG and DS9 where I was excited about the next scene or what character was going to do what.

This is one of those episodes. "Wouldn't it be cool if a warhead could talk?" No. Not in this way at least.

Janeway being okay to continuing working on a weapon of mass destruction on board her ship is insane. Why doesn't the crew protest? How much unnecessary danger should Janeway subject her crew to before shes relieved of command? You have an active alien warhead on board, one who is confused and "distressed", doesn't this imply it could BLOW UP at anytime?

If anyone is looking for a show more satisfying and with greater substance than Voyager, check out Ronald D Moore's Battlestar Galactica. Voyager is a waste of time and brain cells - i won't be finishing the series.

Starfleet confusion

[beispsyd-18523 · 5/10 · 20 May 2020]

Another prime example among many other particular episodes where writers once again denote StarFleet "Principals" in usual confusion and immense frustration to the viewer!

So tired of the Star Fleet/Janeway making decisions off rationalizations. It's like find the most illogical idea and do that one.

The irrationality is nicely demonstrated here. Kim cites Starfleet protocol. Doctor cites is morality (anyone else want to add some philosophical construct that will make real consequences for the crew based on more abstraction, which can't ever be argued with?) Then the scientific fact of an explosion is noted, Ah, but any medical procedure has risk is countered with (What?) But of course the illogical nebulus comment is what drives the reality of the crew to keep explosive on board (What?) Then planets are at war. Janeway says won't help one against the other because... "we can't interfere with the affairs of planets (What was that contradiction?) If won't interfere with plants that have their own dispute... then you're actually interfering with the planets by not letting them dispute...?

Of course it does! Base real decisions on conjecture and irrational sayings and sentiments... it's the Starfleet way on Voyager!

Just off the wall thinking and it's like the crew says, "Ah, darn. Guess we got to do that silly thinking and base reality and harm on that!. Doesn't make sense from some general conjecture speculating thing. So... let's pick that one to base fact on!" Set a course....

Half the series has this conflict. Just another inconsistently irrational situation, or a benefit in being obtuse. You can't argue with an abstraction, conveniently so.

Captain Kim.

[thevacinstaller · 5/10 · 5 February 2023]

Wait a second ---- The alien society programs the WMD with feelings and AI intelligence? For a bomb who's purpose it is to hit a target?

This is a hybrid Harry Kim / Doctor episode and I believe it was the intention of the episode to showcase how intuitive and capable Harry Kim is. Well, I guess he did save the day.

Beyond the Harry Kim plot, I just don't understand what the episode is trying to say. Commentary on the perils of AI? A commentary on the destructive power of WMD's? It has to be the WMD rights? A weapon still active in a war long over still capable of destruction.

This episode just didn't work for me. Maybe it would have worked better if the WMD had a different holographic body and the AI doctor had to passionately convince it to not complete it's mission?

I don't know the people on the world the bomb is going to attack ---- Maybe an ambassador could be on board to give the consequences some personal stakes?